One more volleyball sport reference if you don't mind. In volleyball, serving is the only time that you have total control over the play and the action. The two factors to improving your serving are visualization and practice.

Obviously, the more you practice, the better your muscle memory gets, the better the serve gets.

This article in the NYT article about Amazon is about the book publishing industry. Amazon is waging a battle against book publishers over price. As a book buyer, I often wonder how an e-book can cost almost the same as the printed version. In this article, the publishes yell about the way Amazon undercuts their other sellers and demands lower prices - like Home Depot and WalMart.

Reading the comments, I think most people miss two points: books can still be published without publishers (although they may be inferior products) and Amazon is more about ease of business - easy to order, easy to get delivered.

Yes the whole content system is a mess. Newspapers, magazines, book publishing, music, movies and now TV - all are old school content business models that are in a state of upheaval. Unfortunately, the people in charge of these content systems are fighting the change that is happening - happening in large part because of the Internet - instead of trying to start making changes NOW.

In the book Marketing Outrageously by Jon Spoelstra, in Chapter 13, Jon writes about radio and TV advertising. Basically, you need to dominate a show or a channel to gain market share. Spoelstra doesn't talk about market share. He thinks it's about your brand being considered socially acceptable. PR firms want you to do Frequency and Reach.